Category: Audio

In the market for a complete home theater setup without a lot of clutter? The iLive iHTD8817DT DVD Virtual Surround Sound Speaker Bar (now that’s a mouthful,) is a complete home theater in one piece of hardware.

Belkin has introduced a new gadget which should be a godsend for musicians on a budget. The Belkin TuneStudion is a four-channel mixing board which features a dock for 5G iPods. The system records directly from the mixing board into the iPod at CD-quality.

Industrial designer Art Lebedev is known mostly for his Optimus Mini Three OLED keyboard and his nifty cursor shaped mouse. Now his clean, minimal designs will be showing up in a new desktop speaker system. Art’s new Sonicum speaker system is a 2.1 system featuring two satellite speakers and a powered subwoofer.

With a name like The VIBRO Sounder, I wasn’t sure if this was an audio device or a marital aid. It actually turns out to be a sonic transducer that turns any nearby surface into a loudspeaker.

Korean electronics manufacturer Maxian has recently unveiled their upcoming D900 portable media player. The player features just about everything you could want in a portable. The 4.3-inch display looks great, and supports up to 800×480 (better than DVD) resolution.

The new Onkyo CBX-Z1 AERO Sound System is an all-in-one stereo system featuring a built-in iPod dock. The system will offer a feature set and look that’s very similar to the popular BOSE Wave Sound System.

Looking for speakers that really make a statement? Dutch designers Sander Mulder, Dave Keune from Buro Vormkrijgers have created these surreal speakers that are so wrong, they’re right. I’ll just let the picture do the talking (or woofing).

The new WACS7000 Streamium Wireless Music Center from Philips features a complete wireless music system in a sleek wall-mountable package. The system includes built-in stereo speakers, a 40-watt per channel amp, a cd player and an 80GB hard drive for local storage of up to 1500 CDs.

This new portable radio from SIRIUS enables true on-the-go listening to the satellite radio service. The SIRIUS Stiletto 100 allows live portable reception of SIRIUS programming and stores up to 100 hours of broadcasts or up to 10 hours of individual songs for later playback (using 2GB of internal memory.)

Looking for a bookshelf speaker system for your digital music player that doesn’t suck? Audioengine’s Speaker System 5 has the specs and looks of a true audiophile speaker system but costs just $349, including free shipping.

At this year’s CEDIA and IFA shows, Yamaha showed off updates to their single-box surround sound line known as “digital sound projectors.” The top-of-the-line YSP-1100 features 40 high/mid-range speakers and 2 woofers, along with 42 discrete amplifiers to position sound using beam-focusing technologies.

For those out there who’d prefer their home theater sound system heard and not seen, Audiovox’s AR Home Decor speaker enclosures might be just the ticket. The Home Decor collection provides a number of disguises for the Acoustic Research HD510 series of speakers.

TRITTON Technologies has just introduced their new AX360 headphones with Dolby 5.1 surround capability. The headphones have 4 speakers in each earmuff to create true surround sound, with certified Dolby Digital and Pro Logic playback. An external audio controller box contains the electronics for sound processing, and has ports for coax and fiber optic digital inputs.

The soon to be released Logitech Z-10 Interactive Speaker System features a built-in display capable of showing title and track information for the currently playing digital music track. Data for the backlit LCD is fed via the speakers’ USB connection.

While researching the topic of innovative musical devices, I came across the guys at Bleep Labs and their totally wacky Thingamagoop custom synthesizer series. These portable sythesizers generate electronica using a unique control interface: as you move a colorful LED over a photosensor, the sound’s waveform changes.

Australia’s Mungo Enterprises has engineered the “Infinite Horizon“, a concept device capable of programatically generating modern dance/trance music with, literally, the push of a button. Just press the BIG RED BUTTON, and out comes a track.